Georgia's legendary 1985 team to reunite this weekend in Athens

Champs celebrate 25 years

Posted: Wednesday, May 19, 2010

By Marc Weiszer

Before the Georgia men's tennis team hits the courts on Friday in the NCAA championships, some former Bulldogs in their mid-40s plan to gather at the Athens Country Club and see just how much game they still have.

Players from Georgia's 1985 national championship team are returning to town for a 25th anniversary reunion.

"We're going to get together and hit a few balls and see if anybody's got anything left," said George Bezecny, now a teaching pro in Fisher Island, Florida. "It will probably get a little bit competitive at some point."

A quarter-century after Georgia's breakthrough NCAA team championship, the program now boasts six national titles, second most in the modern era behind Stanford. Before John Isner and Matias Boeker, there came Mikael Pernfors and the rest of the '85 Bulldogs.

Georgia was an NCAA semifinalist in three of the previous four years under coach Dan Magill and had the 1983 national doubles champions in Allen Miller and Ola Malmqvist.

"There was something brewing," said Pernfors, who won back-to-back NCAA singles titles in 1984 and 1985, when he went 136-12 and now has the center court named after him at Georgia.

"That was the team that kind of got us over the hump," said Manuel Diaz, an assistant coach on the '85 and '87 national title teams who succeeded Magill as head coach in 1989 and has won four more championships.

"By the time those guys got to be seniors, they made up their mind they were going to win a national championship."

The team had a potent 1-2 punch in Pernfors and Bezecny, the NCAA singles finalists in '85.

The rest of the lineup included Miller, a four-time All-American from Tucker, senior Deane Frey from Lynchburg, Va., sophomore Phillip Johnson from Dalton and freshman Trey Carter from Butler.

"It kind of laid the groundwork," Diaz said. "Two years later, we won it with a relative young group."

Magill already had racked up a 608-161 record in his first 30 years as coach, winning 10 SEC regular-season outdoor titles entering the 1985 season on the way to a total of 13.

"He just created interest in the program and it was fun to play," said Miller, the head pro at Athens Country Club, where he has worked for 21 years. "We had a lot of people watching. That was the most special thing. It was one of those things that built."

Georgia knocked off defending national champion UCLA 5-1 for the title after beating Southern Cal and Stanford 5-3 to get to the program's first final.

"We had guys that weren't really superstars on the college level, but we came together," said Pernfors, who lives in Vero Beach, Fla.

Bezecny, a Fort Lauderdale native, was hospitalized with dehydration and a sore knee after waking up in the middle of the night in pain after his semifinals. He pulled out a 2-6, 6-4, 6-3 victory in the finals.

"To finally win it for (Magill) - his first one - and with four seniors, it was our last chance to do it there for us," Bezecny said. "It was great to do it in the end in our final year."

The Bulldogs were the No. 6 seed in the tournament, the lowest-ranked team to reach the final since the team format began in 1977.

UCLA was playing for its third NCAA title in four years.

"We're definitely going to win this year," the Bruins' No. 2 singles player Jeff Klaparda told the Los Angeles Times before the tournament. "We're gonna take it all."

Pernfors was one of five regulars who returned in 1985 and made sure that didn't happen.

"It's kind of why I came back," said Pernfors, a Swede who reached the French Open finals in 1986 (losing to Ivan Lendl) and won three ATP singles titles during his career. "We had four seniors and I felt like we had a really good opportunity to do well.

"I had such a great time and it was such a big part of my tennis improvement to be at Georgia and, with all the great guys on the team and Athens being such a great place, I really felt like I wasn't ready to turn pro and also felt like it would be a great opportunity for us."

Georgia became the first program from outside California to win the championship since Trinity (Texas) in 1972.

"It was a big deal when we won," said Magill, 89, who will watch this year's tournament with members of the '85 team in a box in the Dan Magill Tennis Complex. "The largest crowd that ever saw a collegiate tennis match before or since - 5,200 - was there when we won."

"There was a lot of barking," Miller said.

Georgia unseated the Bruins on the Bulldogs' home courts.

"Even though we were the sixth seed, we didn't really play or get exposed much to those California schools," Bezecny said. "We knew we were in the mix. ... We were kind of quietly confident."

It was the first national team title for Georgia in an NCAA-conducted championship.

"It was just a sense of relief," Diaz said. "In the early '80s we started getting to the Final Four, but we couldn't get to the finals. We kept talking about once we get in the finals, it's over. We had a lot of confidence that if we could get past that mental hurdle that our guys would really come through."

The '85 team got together for a 20th anniversary five years ago. They'll reminisce again and catch up with old friends this weekend, including a dinner planned Saturday night at a downtown Athens restaurant.

Tennis remains a big part of their lives.

Johnson is the tennis coach at Baylor School in Chattanooga.

Pernfors, who turns 47 in July, plays some Champions Tour events. He was edged by Bjorn Borg in a tiebreaker in a best-of-three sets match in April in Boston. He also coaches Latvian Karlis Lejniekis, ranked 576th in the world.

"We've got everybody coming back," Miller said. "It's really going to be nice to see everybody and catch up and see what everybody's doing and tell a few stories."